'My father,' he began. He talked about Paraguay, the country that no one had ever heard of, a railway line he would build, tick tack snicketty snack across her stomach and between her breasts, until bumph it hit her nose.

In London, he told her, he had mounted his first train. Thirty-nine advisors, one hundred and three trunks, and return tickets to Brighton. What a young fool he was. Outside the window, the city did not stop. Valera, his equerry, would not take the hat off his lap, his knees prissily together, the words stalled in his mouth. England, that wretched country – they did these things so well. He went back to his London rooms, and every day there was another scroll of paper uncurled and weighted on his desk, another engineer indicating this elevation or that point of strain. A ship – the Tacuari- rising in the dry dock at Limehouse, even as he spoke. Plans for an arsenal, a railway line. Above all, there would be railways. Eliza could not imagine it, but Francisco's father never left Paraguay. Before him, the first Dictator, Francia, never left his own bedroom. And now, here he was in Europe, meeting men by the hour, hiring them with a look, these buzzard British, immensely polite and ignorant, Jesuits all. He said to them, Can you see? Can you see? The silted land of the Parana basin, the groves of orange trees, the willing men, a country with heart. Can you see? A country that will eat you, and love you and make you her own. We will embroider steel across her breast.

No, he said. She must come and teach them to put their hats on the floor, in the cool tiled drawing rooms of Asuncion. But really, he was surrounded by fools; she must come with him as far as Rome.